A one-topic blog: how is it that the most imminent and lethal implication for humankind - the fact that the doctrine of "Mutually Assured Destruction" will not work with Iran - is not being discussed in our media? Until it is recognized that MAD is dead, the Iranian threat will be treated as a threat only to Israel and not as the global threat which it in fact is.
A blog by Mladen Andrijasevic

“He [Netyanyahu] did
not make the required political moves to accord his government domestic
legitimacy. Even as he engaged in brinkmanship vis-a-vis Iran, he also engaged in brinkmanship vis-a-vis
the United States,
the Israeli security establishment and local public opinion. Suddenly,
therefore, the tables were turned. Instead of Iran
being perceived as an evil power undermining the world order, Israel began to
be perceived as a crazy state threatening world peace.”

And why does the world perceive Israel
as a crazy state threatening world peace?
Precisely because the world press, including Ari Shavit, refused to discuss
Shia eschatology, the Mahdi and the Twelvers,
and refused to interview scholars who
would have informed them.

Ari Shavit writes.” Instead of the United States and Israel
working together against Iran,
the United States and Israel began to
work against each other."

What Ari Shavit omits is to explain how is
Nathayhu supposed to trust the Obama administration which supports the Muslim
Brotherhood, the most anti-Semitic and anti American organization? Here is
former federal prosecutor Andrew
McCarthy on the Obama administration and the Muslim brotherhood.

Ari Shavit should pack his bags and fly to Philadelphia and interview Bernard Lewis instead
of complaining how everyone is blind.

Something went terribly wrong with the Netanyahu strategy of blocking
Iranian nuclearization. The threat is as daunting as ever, but stopping it has
become increasingly complicated

It’s clear: one way or another, Iran is going
to change our lives. If Iran
becomes a nuclear power, Israel
will be forced to become a fortress state with high walls around it in order to
stand fast in a nuclearized, radicalized Middle East
that will pose a threat to its very existence. There will be no chance for
peace and no prospect of normality: we will become as Sparta. If Israel
tries to curb Iran
by means of a military attack, it will find itself in a missile war that will
strike at the home front as the home front has never been struck before.
Israeli society will undergo a severe trauma for which it is unprepared,
morally or mentally.

If it is
the United States that
finally stops Iran by the
use of force, that move will likely exact high prices from Israel. To
counterbalance a violent assault against a Muslim power, the United States
will have to engage in political acts against the Jewish state which are liable
to damage Israeli security assets. It follows that the question of Iran is not an
abstract strategic issue but a question of real life. The answer to that
question is going to influence the way of life and the course of life of each
and every one of us. Iran is
not out there somewhere, beyond the hills of darkness; Iran is here, in every bar in Tel Aviv and in
every housing project in Be’er Sheva and in every moshav in the Galilee.

The problem
of Iran
is not an ideological problem and not a moral problem − it is an attentiveness
problem. There
are no good people and bad people in the face of Natanz, only those who see and
those who are blind. The far-reaching implications of the challenge posed by Iran’s nuclear
project were known a decade ago. Already a decade ago it was clear that Israel’s
cardinal mission was not to arrive at a bomb-or-bombing crossroads. But Israel refused
to internalize the Iranian challenge.

The
strategic establishment addressed it and the intelligence community coped with
it, but the broad public repressed it. As the Iranian threat did not entail an
immediate price or concrete consequences, it remained amorphous. It was not
part of the political debate or the public discourse. It had no concrete place
in our concrete life. The psychological difficulty of looking head-on at Iran brought about a situation in which the good
decade, in which it was possible to stop Iran without resorting to force,
was allowed to slip by.

The
attentiveness deficit was not confined to Israel. By the middle of the last
decade, all the Western intelligence agencies were already quite familiar with
the Iranian nuclear project. All the leaders in the West understood that Iran was seriously threatening the United States, Europe
and the entire world order. But Western public opinion was not capable of
coping with the challenge, either psychologically or conceptually. The Western
elites turned their back on Iran.

The Western
leaders therefore lacked a political context which would enable them to act
with determination against Iran.
Because the Iranian threat was not a tomorrow-morning thing, dealing with it
was put off and fudged. No crippling sanctions were imposed on Iran in time.
No deal was struck with Russia
so that Iran
could be subjected to a true political-economic blockade. Khamenei was not
presented with a credible ultimatum of nuclearization or survival. For the past
decade, Tehran has faced a weak and flaccid West
which has been unable to block Iran’s
nuclear project.

The
attentiveness problems of both Israel
and the West stemmed from the same source: the intoxication of success. For 40
years, the Israelis have lived quite a good life under the safety net which
Dimona cast over them. For that very reason, they are not aware of the great
debt they owe to Israel’s
regional strategic monopoly. Nor are they aware of the jolting consequences
liable to ensue if the monopoly is shattered.

The
Americans and Europeans are in the same boat: for the past 67 years they have
lived a life of peace and wellbeing under the safety net cast over them in the
form of the West’s overwhelming nuclear superiority. For that very reason they
are not aware of the great debt they owe to that situation of superiority,
which ensures that they do not face a concrete nuclear threat. Nor are they
aware of the jolting consequences liable to ensue if Western strategic
superiority is undercut and a Shiite nuclear threat emerges, which will have a
direct effect on the good life in Paris, Berlin, London and New York.

So, the
Iranian nuclear issue is like a baobab tree. In its early stages of its growth
there was no difficulty in chopping it down. But in the advanced stages there
was no general mobilization to fell it. The disparity between Iranian stamina
and Israeli and Western lethargy played into the hands of the Iranians. The
disparity between the focus, tenacity and sophistication of the ayatollahs, and
the lack of focus, lack of tenacity and the lassitude of the democracies
allowed the clerics of darkness to get the best of the enlightened statesmen.
As a result of the attentiveness deficit of Israel and of the West, there was
no timely political prevention and no timely economic prevention.

Another
result was that a belief developed in the power of clandestine prevention which
was as naive as it was false. Owing to a severe blindness, brought on by a deep
mental and cultural weakness, the baobab tree was not uprooted in the years
when uprooting was possible. Instead of curbing Iran,
the United States became
entangled in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel was
preoccupied with settlements instead of being preoccupied with centrifuges. Europe froze as though crippled. Both the international
community and the Jewish state watched the horrifying tree of the Iranian
nuclear project growing before their eyes, helpless to stunt its growth.

Thus,
Benjamin Netanyahu’s great contribution to the struggle against the Iranian
nuclear project was to inject attentiveness. In contrast to many others, Bibi
understood Iran,
internalized Iran and was
totally focused on Iran.
From the day he entered the Prime Minister’s Bureau it was clear that the
mission of his life was to thwart Iranian nuclearization. With that end in
mind, he formed the odd coalition with Ehud Barak. To block the Iranian nuclear
project he capitulated to the ultra-Orthodox, neglected the economy and ignored
social problems. To block the Iranian nuclear project, he created an Israeli
military option in which vast financial resources were invested. To block the
Iranian nuclear project, he made sophisticated use of the military option.

Indeed,
during 2011 and at the beginning of 2012 the Netanyahu strategy produced
impressive results. After long years of do-nothingness, the Iranian issue rose
to the top of the global agenda. The West woke up. The United States promised to prevent a nuclear Iran and
prepared a military capability which can actualize that commitment. Europe
imposed harsh sanctions on Iran.
Not for fear of Ahmadinejad, but for fear that Netanyahu would strike at
Ahmadinejad the international community started to place obstacles in the way
of the Iranian president.

However, at
a certain point something went awry. Netanyahu went too far and overdid the
pressure. He did not try to persuade the West but only threatened the West. He
did not make the necessary political concessions to accord Israel
international legitimacy. He did not make the required political moves to accord his
government domestic legitimacy. Even as he engaged in brinkmanship vis-a-vis Iran, he also engaged in brinkmanship vis-a-vis
the United States,
the Israeli security establishment and local public opinion. Suddenly, therefore,
the tables were turned. Instead of Iran
being perceived as an evil power undermining the world order, Israel began to
be perceived as a crazy state threatening world peace.

Instead of
the United States and Israel working together against Iran, the United
States and Israel began to work against each
other. Instead of a wedge being driven between the government and the people in
Tehran, a wedge
was driven between the government and the people in Tel Aviv. Netanyahu became
completely isolated. The pistol with which he threatened Iran and
threatened the world had no bullets.

Netanyahu’s
strategy was based on two fundamental concepts. One was the Iranian zone of
immunity ‏(which obliges action
against Iran
before it succeeds in implanting its nuclear project deep underground where it
will be invulnerable‏).
The second was the Israeli zone of immunity ‏(which was the only period of time in which Israel could act against Iran without the United States blocking it‏). Netanyahu believed that the two zones of immunity brought
about a situation in which zero hour was now. Only in the summer-autumn of 2012
would it still be possible to stop Iran. Only in the summer-autumn of
2012 would an Israeli action be possible, both operationally and politically.
If Israel did not vanquish Iran this year,
it would not be able to do so in the coming years, Netanyahu believed. The
country’s fate would no longer be in its own hands but in the hands of others.

No one
knows whether Netanyahu and Barak truly intended to attack this year or whether
they intended to parlay the attack at the last minute into a firm international
commitment that would render an attack superfluous. However, it is perfectly
clear that Netanyahu, at least, planned to bring the crisis to a peak before the
American presidential elections. Those who think that the prime minister tried
to topple President Obama are mistaken. Netanyahu tried to exploit the
political vulnerability of candidate Obama to recruit him willy-nilly for the
campaign against Iran.
But that goal, too, eluded Netanyahu. Beginning in the spring, the American
president stopped heeding his threats. The hold-me-back strategy boomeranged.
International attentiveness was again lost. The Israeli zone of immunity that
Netanyahu tried to build with such great labor collapsed on his head.

Four months
ago, Haaretz Magazine launched the Countdown series of articles. The series was
intended to serve as a platform for a high-quality, untainted, businesslike
discussion of the Iranian issue.It tried to go beyond militancy and beyond
passions and beyond the personal squabbles in order to present Haaretz readers
with a broad range of thoughts about Iran. Thirteen people were
interviewed for the series: Moshe Ya’alon, Isaac Ben-Israel, Yehezkel Dror, Uzi
Arad, Giora Eiland, Kobi Richter, Yossi Beilin, Ephraim Sneh, Efraim Halevy,
Tzachi Hanegbi, Amos Yadlin, a former senior official from the Atomic Energy Agency
and a well-known decision-maker. Two or three vigorously supported an attack,
three firmly opposed an attack and the others expressed complex viewpoints.

However,
the majority of the interviewees agreed that the hub of Israel’s Iranian strategy must be close
cooperation with the United
States. Almost all the interviewees agreed
that cooperation of this sort was not achieved in the past few years and that a
supreme effort must be made to achieve it in the immediate future. Even though
the majority of the interviews suggested implicitly that Netanyahu and Barak
took a sharp and focused view of the Iranian challenge, they also suggested
that the two had focused inordinately on the Israeli military option. They
failed to prepare world and Israeli public opinion for a clash with Iran and they did not prepare Israel properly
for the ordeal ahead.

The Iran decision is probably the most difficult
that Israel
will have to make in this generation. In a number of senses it resembles the
Dimona decision. As with Dimona, so with Iran: the risks are enormous in
either direction. As with Dimona, so with Iran: a distinctive combination of
boldness, responsibility and creativity is required. Cooperation is needed with
the Western powers, but at the same time Israel must be able to stand up to
the Western powers. It is necessary to mobilize all the national resources,
devise singular solutions and exercise wise and far-sighted leadership.
However, while young Israel
displayed model behavior regarding Dimona, when it came to Natanz and Fordow,
adult Israel
behaved awkwardly and confusedly. Tremendous deeds were done. There was
professional excellence. However, the state as a state did not mobilize all its
abilities and all its skills to cope properly with the existential threat.

Accordingly,
as of now, the Iranian nuclear project has not been foiled politically, not
been foiled economically and not been foiled clandestinely. Accordingly, as of
now, under present conditions, to foil the Iranian nuclear project militarily
appears adventurist and inapplicable. The likelihood is growing that in the
years ahead the burden of foiling the Iranian nuclear project will pass from Israel’s hands to those of the United States‏(which may or may not act‏). The risk is growing that Israel’s efforts to block Iranian
nuclearization will come to naught.

The summer
of 2011 was a summer of protest; the summer of 2012 was a summer of dread.
Toward the end of the summer the dread faded. The more the public discussion
about the Iranian issue seethed, the less likely it came to seem that Israel would strike at Iran already
this year. However, the truth is that no one knows what the truth is. Not even
the prime minister and the defense minister. The Iranian challenge has not
diminished. On the contrary: The risks embodied in Iranian nuclearization have
not lessened; they have intensified. So the countdown has not yet ended. It
will be renewed when the cloud of uncertainty evaporates and Israel will
again face the dilemma of its very existence.